Urban Labs
Health Lab

The Health Lab partners with civic and community leaders to identify, rigorously evaluate, and help scale programs and policies that improve health outcomes, particularly for low-income and disadvantaged urban residents.

Advancing Health in Urban Communities

The soaring cost of health care in the United States has created an urgent need to improve the efficacy and efficiency of the nation’s health care system. Our health care system remains compartmentalized and often fails vulnerable patients—particularly those with multiple chronic health problems—in addition to straining government resources. Health care reform has created exciting new opportunities in health care access and health care delivery, but policymakers and practitioners are still working to understand how it can sustainably and reliably improve health outcomes for underserved populations including the homeless, the elderly, and those in the criminal justice system.

The Health Lab leverages rigorous research methods such as randomized controlled trials, large datasets, and partnerships with government agencies and nonprofits to test novel health care delivery models and improve public health outcomes for underserved populations in Chicago and beyond.